Lately I have been seeing more and more first-time devs lament “How can I possibly market my game when I have 0 following! No social media, no youtube subscribers.”
In today’s blog post, I am here to reassure you that a huge number of the games that do well come from developers who started from 0. They didn’t start a devlog youtube channel, or dance on TikTok. Basically, the reason you give Steam 30% is to overcome that lack of a following so your game can be broadcasted to millions of paying gamers who don’t know you exist.
The availability heuristic
I believe the sentiment that “only games that do well are from people who have big audiences” stems from the availability heuristic and from watching too much Youtube (really you should stop watching so much Youtube).
The availability heuristic is this mental defect that we humans have where we tend to over-value information that we can easily remember and recently saw. Basically if something happened recently and it was dramatic, we assume that is the most likely case.
You must be constantly alert to try and not fall for the availability heuristic.
The youtube algorithm is going to surface people with the biggest followings to you. If those Youtubers have a hit game, that information is what is “available” to you. So now in your decision making you see BIG following Youtuber + Hit Game = YOU NEED A BIG FOLLOWING TO MAKE A HIT GAME!
That info is AVAILABLE! But it is wrong.
Post facto following
Looking at public social media numbers can also trick you. You might see a trending hit game, then look at the social media account with a huge following and say “See! Big Following = hit game”
Buuuuut the following came after the hit game.
Back when Valheim released, I did a deep dive into the history of the social media following of the developer Iron Gate. I had to pay a monthly subscription to a twitter scraping marketing tool to see their following over time (talk about unavailable data) here is what I found:
On Valheim’s launch day the Twitter account had only 1700 followers. When Valheim launched the content creators played it a TON and the Steam algorithm promoted it and it sold millions of copies. THEN the people who played and loved the game followed the Twitter account.
The following came AFTER the game was a hit.
Now that Valheim has been a hit for years, the Twitter account has over 169,000 followers.
If you just quickly did some research you might think, “Oh Valheim sold well because they had a following of 169,000 people.”
NOPE! That is the Availability Heuristic tricking you.
They have 169,000 BECAUSE the game was a hit.
The unavailable games
Fight the heuristic! Dig up the unavailable!
That’s why I am here for you. You can’t just look at the games that are being shown to you by people with big audiences that are favored by our Algorithm Overlords.
Every quarter I try to fight the heuristic and the algorithms by laboriously looking at every game released on Steam and filtering down to which ones beat the odds to earn at least 1000 reviews (here is a link to my research into the Q1 2025 games, Here is Q3 of 2024, I am working on Q2 2025 now)
It is so reassuring because you find the weirdest games doing well from people who basically don’t exist on the internet.
For example Beltmatic (which I wrote about here) has 1485 reviews and was made by a person from a company called Notional Games who has no website.
I think this is their twitter account and it has 1 follower and has never tweeted
The Beltmatic Steam page links to only one social account: their youtube channel which has 65 followers, two uploaded videos for a combined 7,200 views.
This guy is UNAVAILABLE.
This guy is not being considered when people calculate their understanding of visibility and what it takes to have a hit game.
And there are hundreds of games just like Beltmatic that did well from developers with no following.
Your following isn’t your fate
When you are new to Steam marketing you don’t see all the stuff that goes behind the scenes that actually gets you visibility.
Tweeting, posting Youtube videos, Tiking on TikTok, are all visible (aka available) so people assume marketing = posting on social media platforms.
That is the availability heuristic tricking you!
The way you actually market your game is you find individuals who have big audiences, and you reach out to them directly and you show them your game and ask “Hey! I think your audience would like this, would you like to show it to them?”
This happens behind the scenes in hidden 1 on 1 messages between the developer of the game and the influential person. It happens with submission forms where you submit your game and some curator sees your entry and decides to include your game in a festival on Steam.
Marketing a game is a bunch of direct messages to influential people
Here is how you market your game when you have 0 following.
First, you use howtomarketagame.com/festivals, and apply for every festival that opens that fits your game. The person reading your festival submission is an influential person who CURATES their event and maybe your game will be shown to the giant audience that the CURATOR built over time.
The other way you market your game is you build a giant list of Youtubers and Twitch Streamers who have their own audiences. Then you email them a key to your game or link to your demo and you say “I think your audience will like our game.” Then the content creator CURATES and decides if they like your game. If they do, they show it to their audience.
Neither one of those requires a “following” or an “audience.”
Actual marketing is using other people’s followings.
Thomas Brush
Thomas Brush has a big youtube and social following and has had hit games. On my last appearance, we looked at the Steam follower count for his upcoming game Twisted Tower.
Thomas confirmed that his biggest increases came from festivals (in red.) Not his following.
Now I won’t deny his following helped but the real visibility comes form places outside of his channel.
Jonas Tyroller
Another successful game dev and youtuber. I appeared on his show to look at some of his numbers. Here is a companion blog post I wrote diving deep into his numbers (which makes for boring youtube content with poor watch-through but is vital if you are making a game (see youtube sucks)).
Here is the concurrent user count (CCU) for his 3 most recent games.
That little red line at the bottom is for Will You Snail? his 2D platformer that did well but not great. Note that despite his huge youtube following, and adding a level editor, he couldn’t boost the CCU number post launch.
Compare Will You Snail’s paltry CCUs to the huge numbers of his other games Islanders and Thronefall. Both games in genres more closely aligned to Steam’s audience taste profile. Notice how the blue line and green lines spike regularly? Those spikes come from festivals, using smart discounting, and getting Valve to feature the game using Specail Offers like Daily Deals and Weekend Deals. The visibility comes from Steam, NOT Jonas’s Youtube subscribers.
Even if you have a big audience, it is really hard to get Steam players to care about a platformer.
The performance of his games is independent of his success as a Youtuber.
Should you start a youtube devlog?
No.
If you love Youtube and have always dreamed of being a Youtuber (for some weird reason) then sure, do it for fun. I wish you the best. But know the reason why you are doing it: to be a Youtube star.
But, I find most game developers just don’t have the charisma (or rizz) to make Youtube worth it. If you are terrified of showing your face, being the center of attention, or dancing on camera, I have great news for you… Youtube is not necessary and likely a waste of your valuable dev time.
Youtube is a time sink. I hear horror stories of gamedevs spending 8+ hours writing a script then another 9 hours editing a single video. That is insane and that time is better spent reaching out to hundreds of content creators who already have an audience. Let those poor suckers (I mean souls) spend 8 hours editing their video about your game instead of you doing all that work.
It’s the game
The two big ways to get visibility are festivals and content creators.
Now you might say “But I applied and emailed content creators and I didn’t get any response.”
Well… you also need to make a game that people want to show to their audience. They don’t just show every single game.
That is the downside of curation. Sometimes you are the one who gets curated out.
You need to make the game that people want to play. It is hard. And I am a filthy marketer not a game designer. I can’t help you much here. Seek the advice of game designers.
You need reputation not a following
I hope this post gives you some hope. You don’t need a following. You can start from nothing. It will be slow, you probably have to release multiple games before you are good enough at game dev to make a full time living at this, but a social media following is not a requirement for success on Steam.
But, that doesn’t mean all game developers are on equal footing.
This industry is incredibly small and full of dreamers who have never shipped a game and sadly never will. Your history of game development does follow you. This industry takes you much more seriously once you have shipped something.
Fellow developers are more likely to help you out once they see you can actually ship.
Publishers are more likely to back you when you have proven you can deliver and won’t just run off with the money.
Suprisingly, I have talked to developers with several games under their belt and some of them get approached by event organizers who ask them “do you have anything interesting you want to reveal at our next show?” They want to feature you just because of your reputation.
For your first game, people are going to ignore you. The most likely scenario is that a developer won’t finish their game or that it will suck. So most people in this industry will withold covering you or supporting you until you prove you can actually ship a game. You have to prove you have the grit to get it done.
Then once you deliver a game, even if it sucks, people will pay more attention to you. You have proven to be one of the few people who can actually commit and deliver. For your next game, they will look at you history and see you get stuff done, so they will be more likely to invest in you, cover your game, share your content.
So, release more games, build a reputation, yes you should stil try to build a following on social media (but it isn’t mandatory).
If you want more information on how to actually, step by step, market your game consider these blog posts